Rightmove ($RMV.L): a 253% ROIC platform now trading 44% below the takeover offer its board rejected in 2024

*Researched and valued as of 21 June 2026. If you're reading this a few days later, treat the price/multiples below as a snapshot from that date, not today's numbers.*

Rightmove operates the UK's leading property portal: a two-sided marketplace where estate agents and new-homes developers pay monthly subscription fees to list, and which held 89% of consumer time spent on UK property portals at the end of FY2025. The shares (London-listed, quoted in pence) have fallen 47% from their August 2025 peak, compressing the trailing P/E to 15.5x, the lowest in 15 years of data. The operating business has not deteriorated over that stretch. The de-rating traces almost entirely to a competition lawsuit whose financial exposure remains undisclosed.

**Headline numbers** (FY2025, year ended 31 December 2025; valuation as of 21 June 2026)

- Revenue: £425.1m (+9% YoY; FY26 guidance 8–10%)
- Operating margin: 67.7% statutory (underlying ~70%; guided down to 67% for FY26)
- Trailing P/E: 15.5x, a 15-year low; the prior trough was 23.1x in FY2014
- FCF: £237.8m (7.1% yield); net cash of £32.1m
- ROIC: 252.7%, on a near-zero invested capital base
- Buybacks: share count down 29% cumulatively since FY2011, with no year of dilution

**The lawsuit doing the damage**

The stock peaked at 826.8p on 7 August 2025. On 13 November 2025 Rightmove disclosed a "notice of a potential claim" and fell 33% from that peak within six trading sessions. On 1 April 2026 the company confirmed a collective proceedings application (broadly the UK's class-action mechanism) had been filed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal, the UK's specialist competition court, and the stock hit a 52-week low of 391.3p. The market had already absorbed a genuine piece of operational bad news without much drama: FY2026 margin guidance was cut from 70% to 67% in early November to fund AI and adjacent-vertical investment, and the stock was still around 655p the day before the litigation disclosure. The collapse followed the legal event, not the operational one.

Neither announcement, nor the annual report filed three months after the first disclosure, included any quantum, provision, or sensitivity analysis. The statutory fine cap is 10% of group turnover, roughly £42.5m on FY2025 revenue, but civil damages in collective proceedings are uncapped. The larger risk is not a one-off payment. It is any remedial action constraining the pricing power behind 70%+ underlying margins and the 6% annual growth in average revenue per advertiser, which is what actually drives the model: membership grew just 1% in FY2025 while ARPA rose 6% to £1,621 a month.

**The business underneath, and what insiders did**

FY2025 was delivered cleanly: revenue up 9% to £425.1m, FCF of £237.8m, and the May 2026 trading statement reaffirmed all FY2026 guidance. Over 85% of traffic is organic and direct. Capital allocation has been unusually consistent: the share count has fallen every single year since FY2011, and roughly £2.14bn has been returned to shareholders against £2.10bn of cumulative FCF over that period.

Directors have bought through the drawdown. Net insider purchases totalled £1.05m from July 2023 to June 2026, including a single £995k purchase by a non-executive director at 454.2p on the day of the FY2025 annual report, with the CEO and chair also buying at 400–460p in early 2026. No director has sold since REA Group withdrew its takeover approach in September 2024. That approach is its own reference point: REA's final proposal valued Rightmove at 775p per share plus a 6p special dividend, the board rejected it as significantly undervaluing the company, and the stock now trades roughly 44% below that level despite revenue growing 9% in the interim.

**Bottom line**

At the note's valuation date the shares sat at 435.6p, or 15.5x trailing earnings with a 7.1% FCF yield, against UK classifieds peers Auto Trader at 13.6x and Baltic Classifieds at 20.8x. Even the guided-down 67% margin would remain the highest in that peer group. The note's view: the de-rating is real and the risk is genuine, but the price has overshot the fundamentals, which have not fractured. If the Tribunal declines to certify the claim, peer multiples on FY2025 earnings of 28.1p imply 380–580p, with the upside end arguable given the margin and ROIC gap. If it certifies, the damages exposure gets quantified and further downside from current levels is likely. It is a binary the operating data cannot resolve, and the 47% drawdown has created a margin of safety the operational data does not require, against a risk it cannot quantify.

**What to watch**

- The Tribunal's certification decision, expected within 1–2 quarters of the April 2026 filing
- The H1 2026 underlying operating margin print (expected July 2026): below 66% would signal costs escalating beyond guidance
- The size of the successor buyback programme once the current £90m tranche completes on 31 July 2026

**Sources**

- Rightmove Annual Financial Report, 27 Feb 2026 (RNS)
- Rightmove Trading Statement, 8 May 2026 (RNS)
- Rightmove RNS: Statements re Press Comment, 13 Nov 2025 and 1 Apr 2026
- RNS: "REA withdraws possible offer for Rightmove," 30 Sep 2024
- Selfside data: financial statements, price history, insider transactions, and peer snapshots, FY2011–FY2025

*For information purposes only, not investment advice - independent research, originally published in full at Selfside.*